Spent the afternoon shackled to a conversation with my cousin.
It really is the purest form of torture. She employs various methods to draw from me exactly what she wants to hear, and I try to preserve my self-respect in the face of Ultimate Pain. There are only so many "uh-huh"s and "of course you are"s and "holy shit he was married?"s that I can color with sincerity before I begin to lose it. My mood eventually sours as I realize that she will never stop. My sweaty running shirt freezes and I watch as my Kraft Cheesiest cools and curdles untouched. My stomach barks and my cramped arm and a million other factors conspire to wither me. Oh, but hold on, she's asking if she's pretty.
Like any despairing captive, I decide that honesty is my only way out:
"Shannon, you have other qualities. But I'm not going to spend the next twenty minutes stroking your ego."
And faced with a discussion that has a turned a disagreeable corner, she packs up her tools, speaks a word to the guard that secures her a later meeting, and is gone.
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